WazirX exchange was hacked on 18th July and crypto worth $230 million was stolen. This exchange is one of the biggest exchanges in the Indian market because it covers almost 40% of the market share. If we convert this amount into the INR currency, then it is about 2000 crores which is a very big amount. In India, the crypto segment is not regulated despite these people trading a lot in crypto and most of them are dealing with centralised exchanges because the majority of users are new. They don't know how to trade on the decentralised exchanges and it can be one of the reasons why lack of knowledge and information is also there. It's also because they feel that exchanges are FIU registered so there is nothing to worry about because the government will be playing an important role but unfortunately, it is not happening. Even after 25 days of the hack, there has been no government intervention in this matter.
The exchange founder is busy promoting another project called Shardeum and he is least interested in talking about wazirx. The founder is not in India, and he is currently in Dubai so there is nothing that can be done against the theme if he doesn't do anything to get the funds recovered at all. This was the exchange that was treated as one of the exchanges where people could put their hard-earned money and also Binance acquired this at some point in time however now this is still a controversial part. As of now, we don't know who the owner is whether it is Nishchal Shetty or the Binance itself.
Many people invested in Crypto for the long-term objective which makes sense and this time when the market is bearish, they kept their crypto holding in the exchange wallet. They were hoping that once the market recovers the value will grow significantly and that is the time they will be able to withdraw it by booking profit. There is another reason why the majority of users could not withdraw their crypto because the exchange did not allow the withdrawal of most of the tokens. In India, many things are not going well and surprisingly there are no solid reasons for this but it's just that exchanges are doing this, and nobody can question them.
This exchange was providing INR withdrawal, but it was not providing the crypto withdrawal which means if you buy a crypto then you have no option to withdraw it even if you want to have this self-custody. There are many other exchanges also following the same protocol that exchange encourages you to buy and invest in Crypto, but they don't want you to take away the holding. Thirdly they do not have anything in place that can safeguard your investment so if a hack happens then it is your loss, but they are still not ready to allow the withdrawal so that you can safeguard your crypto by yourself. As per the update shared by the exchange 45% of the crypto holding has been hacked and the remaining 55% is available with the exchange but till now the withdrawal for that remaining balance is also not enabled. People are struggling to get the remaining funds, but the exchange is not doing anything. They are not maintaining any transparency with the community, but they claim to be the community-first exchange which is not true unfortunately.
Many people are sharing the problems that they are going through and they want some withdrawals, but exchange founders are not bothered about it. Because the amount that is hacked is big and there are so many users having smaller or bigger amounts on the exchange, they all deserve to get their funds back whatever is available as of now. If recovery happens then they will get the remaining amount in future which is understood but why the exchange is not allowing the withdrawal for the remaining fund is another question. People are questioning if the exchange also the remaining funds with them have because not enabling the withdrawals can be a situation that the exchange do not have those funds with them. If it happens then it is another bigger problem for the users because legally, they will not be able to do anything. After all, the founder is not in the country and they can easily escape from the problems, but users are going to have a tough time if this is a reality.
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